I want to start a saltwater fish tank. The most I'm willing to start off with is a 200 gallon but that might be too much work to clean. I have never owned a saltwater aquarium. I guess the smallest I would go with would be 50 gallon. I guess I want to know what would be the most easiest of them all!
A very good SW starter tank is a 75g. Like Darwin Ahoy said, the extra 6" front to back (referred to as depth) is extremely helpful in your aquascaping.
As long as you are using approx. .75 lbs to 1.75 lbs of live rock per gallon (less dense, lighter, 'lacier', live rock is better) for your biological filtration, an appropriately sized protein skimmer, there is no reason whatsoever to use any other filter.
The old aquarists adage, "the solution to pollution is dilution" is a great one. Over simplifying that phrase to mean, the same quantity of a toxin in more water than less water will have less of a negative impact, will direct you to go as big as your wallet will allow.
Learning on a 75g tank with a 15g-20g sump should be a good size system to learn the ropes and not break the bank at the same time.
If you need any additional help, please feel free to give me a shout out.
I've had great success picking up a lot of equipment I need from the following link. They've been very helpful on the phone, priced great, honest and carry the equipment a true saltwater aquarist would use. Not the cheap stuff you'd get at the big box stores, and wind up having to buy twice (or even three times to get it right).
To start off with I would say a 55 gallon. Saltwater fish are much more difficult to keep than other fish and saltwater tanks are much harder to keep at the right condition.
Hope I helped.
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Usually the bigger you go, the easier it is. For example, if you need a table spoon of chemicals in a 200 gallon tank but you put a drop too much, nothing too serious will happen, but if you add a drop too much to a 10 gallon tank then you're in serious trouble. I would say maybe a 100-150 gallon would be perfect- not too too big to clean but big enough to be quite forgiving.
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about 50 is a good one to start as 200 gallons is very very expensive….and i would make sure your up to marine tanks before you invest to much money on a 100+ gallon tank
when starting you will need about 50-70lbs of live rock…and about 3 to 4in bed of live sand….next you will need to protein skimmer and a decent filter……also you will need to look in to lighting for a tank that big go with 250 to 350 watts of lighting of CFL or MH….keeping in mind that MH has a lot of UV light….and is hot and needs to be about 8in to 12in above the tank….once you have all this you need to let the tank sit and cycle for the next 3 weeks then you can add the first fish…..
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As big as you can possibly afford and fit in your house. The bigger, the better.
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Start with a 55. That way you can see if you want to do that much work on a bigger tank down the line.
Good luck!
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all of these answers are correct i have no idea why they've been thumbed-down
a 200 gallon is a bit much to start with… get your feet wet with a 55 (i usually recomend a 30 but since you want it big…) work out the eb and flow of SW keepery and then progress to what it is you want to do…
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If you're going to follow suggestions for a 55, get a 75. Same length, but that extra 6" in width comes in handy! Especially once live rock starts taking up space.
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I think a good beginer size is a 45 gallon.
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bigger can be easier or harder dependsw how big.
for a new salt water 50 gallons should be fine your looking at about 180 litres i would of thought there.
whivh is a decent size.
any bigger and its going to cost you big time.
remember live rock is a big chunk of the money that is spent on a saltwater aquarium you need a certain amount per a gallon e.g 1kg per 10 gallons.
there for i would say your looking at at least £200's worth of live rock just for a 50 gallon tank.
also becaus eof the type of habitat they live in you can only have a certain amount of fish per a tank e.g a 20 gallon tank would only be adviseable for around 3 average fish.
go for the 50 gallon unless you really want more you can always upgrade
hope this helps
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Fish Keeper
A very good SW starter tank is a 75g. Like Darwin Ahoy said, the extra 6" front to back (referred to as depth) is extremely helpful in your aquascaping.
As long as you are using approx. .75 lbs to 1.75 lbs of live rock per gallon (less dense, lighter, 'lacier', live rock is better) for your biological filtration, an appropriately sized protein skimmer, there is no reason whatsoever to use any other filter.
The old aquarists adage, "the solution to pollution is dilution" is a great one. Over simplifying that phrase to mean, the same quantity of a toxin in more water than less water will have less of a negative impact, will direct you to go as big as your wallet will allow.
Learning on a 75g tank with a 15g-20g sump should be a good size system to learn the ropes and not break the bank at the same time.
If you need any additional help, please feel free to give me a shout out.
I've had great success picking up a lot of equipment I need from the following link. They've been very helpful on the phone, priced great, honest and carry the equipment a true saltwater aquarist would use. Not the cheap stuff you'd get at the big box stores, and wind up having to buy twice (or even three times to get it right).
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http://www.saltwatercritters.com/home
I started with a 40 gallon, You should start as big as you possibly can manage with 40 gallons as the min
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8 years saltwater exp